Conference Program

Racial miscegenation and the absence of a legal framework that explicitly discriminated against black people fuelled the idea of Brazil as a racial democracy (Freyre 1933), characterised by a “paradisiac innocence, with respect to differences of race” (Park 1942, p.xix). For over half a century, when claims of racial superiority and apartheid regimes seemed to be the norm across continents, the myth that races in Brazil coexisted harmonically was well spread worldwide (Telles 2004). While Freyre’s writing offered formidable opposition to the spread of scientific racism in the 20th century (Skidmore 2002), it also fostered a romanticised view of Brazil as a country which had no racial problems. Race dynamics were, however, far from innocent. Skin colour patterned a range of socioeconomic inequalities in Brazilian society, challenging the long-standing perception of Brazil as a symbol of social justice with respect to race. Pervasive and persistent racial inequalities with low social mobility of non-white population came to be widely documented (Ribeiro 2006). Yet, for long time, the significance of racial disparities failed to be fully appreciated, as these were masked by, confounded with and blamed upon inequalities along other socioeconomic axes such as wealth and class – leading to an underestimation of the crucial role of race in shaping Brazilian society (Valente 2017). This paper examines racial inequalities in educational attainment in Brazil. Specifically, we use multiple waves of national secondary-school exams data (N>9 million), and employ fixed-effect and Oaxaca-Blinder-decomposition regressions to investigate racial educational gaps between Blacks, Mixed-race and Whites. Beyond its size and coverage, our data is of particular significance as this exam plays a critical role for university admission. Aiming to increase access to higher education by allowing students to apply to universities across Brazil (Mello 2022), it is a vital tool to provide educational opportunities and enable social mobility in a country marked by striking socioeconomic inequalities. We find that outcomes are markedly lower for both Blacks and Mixed-race compared to Whites. Although a substantial portion of racial disparities can be attributed to socioeconomic status, racial inequalities persist after controlling for socioeconomic, demographic and contextual characteristics, as well as when looking at specific subsamples which are homogeneous across socioeconomic lines. We also find support for the so-called ‘mulatto escape hatch’ hypothesis, namely the existence of a significant difference in outcomes between Blacks and Mixed-race – originating in the latter’s possible lower exposure to discrimination practices compared to Blacks. Mixed-race students have higher scores compared to Blacks: differences are small in magnitude but robust and statistically significant, and are more marked amongst those in higher socioeconomic strata as well as in Southeastern and Southern regions. In addition, over the decade under consideration, the Black-Mixed gap appears to have widened. Beyond the assessment of racial disparities in Brazilian education, our paper therefore also contributes to the methodological debate on whether to conceptualize race as a three-tiered or a binary (non-white-white) categorisation for the purposes of research and policy, illustrating that treating non-whites as a monolith can ignore important nuances.